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Google is a monopoly – the fix isn't obvious

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Re: Google is a monopoly – the fix isn't obvious

#241

Post by shadowgovt »

consteval wrote: post #231
abduhl wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What possible browser competition can exist? The market price for a browser from a consumer perspective is $0. I will never pay for a browser. All that will happen is new ad placements from smaller companies, directly in the browser.

> All that will happen is new ad placements from smaller companies, directly in the browser. I don't think this is going to be the case. This seems like an extreme conclusion with virtually no precedent. Since an ad browser is such an important piece of software, I imagine it will receive many donations. The reason Chrome doesn't is because it doesn't need them. I think that will change. Also, I think it's possible y…

The precedent is that every browser out there currently has one of:

- integration to ad infrastructure

- integration to the vendor's other service infrastructure

- a cost of more than $0

Given that the market is full of people who will only bear $0, the likely conclusion is that a Chrome separated from the ability to integrate to vendor infrastructure will turn to integrating to someone's ad infrastructure (more poorly and less securely than Chrome currently integrates to Google's infra).

Re: Google is a monopoly – the fix isn't obvious

#242

Post by bluGill »

oneplane wrote: post #117
bluGill wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they break up the ad business it could be helpful. Otherwise search and youtube are like you say synergistic and there is no obvious way to break them up.

Keep in mind that without the Ad business, most of Google's products cannot exist. Search gets paid by Ads, same with YouTube. Most of the free product are just Ad delivery platforms, and they are all pretty much on the verge of losing money as-is. The Ad business itself has margin enough to cover that, and without a set of outlets like those services, it wouldn't be able to exist. Vimeo has tried a different approac…

The larger point is youTube should sell its own ads. As should search. Double click as an agency that sells ads for other websites shouldn't be allowed to sell to the previous google properties, and vice versa.

Re: Google is a monopoly – the fix isn't obvious

#243

Post by shadowgovt »

InsideOutSanta wrote: post #236
abduhl wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What possible browser competition can exist? The market price for a browser from a consumer perspective is $0. I will never pay for a browser. All that will happen is new ad placements from smaller companies, directly in the browser.

"I will never pay for a browser" ...in the current market, which was created by companies like Microsoft, Apple, and Google, who subsidized their browsers through other income.

If Google is broken up, Apple will still have Safari and Microsoft will still have Edge. There is no reason to believe the market for non-$0 browsers will suddenly manifest absent a Google-integrated Chrome.

The people have already spoken with their wallets on this topic.

Re: Google is a monopoly – the fix isn't obvious

#244

Post by aembleton »

serial_dev wrote: post #187
jonhohle wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Credit card companies do one thing - process payments. What cut do VOD or music hosting sites take? Bandcamp takes 15%. eBay takes 15% on things they never physically touch. It’s hard finding hard data, but it seems like YouTube, on average charges $15CPM and pays $5CPM to the highest paid YouTubers. What is the value of download hosting and store platform?

Let's figure it out? Let's allow anyone to do in-app purchases, and app stores, then the market would tell us. Currently, we need to trust these quasi-monopolies that there is no way they can make it cheaper (and for some strange reason still, they don't want to open things up).

> Let's allow anyone to do in-app purchases, and app stores, then the market would tell us.

Whats stopping that now on Android? I have a second app store on my phone.

Re: Google is a monopoly – the fix isn't obvious

#245

Post by Cyph0n »

wil421 wrote: post #237
isodev wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just following this thought then the remedy will be forcing Apple to allow alternative OS and firmware on their devices, allowing consumers to choose what they do with the device hardware they purchased?

Why should they have to allow it? My smart TVs and video game consoles never allowed it, except that short lived Linux PlayStation. Nintendo is pretty hostile about reverse engineering the switch.

But those are gaming and entertainment devices, not general-purpose computing devices that everyone relies on for day-to-day work and life.

A good way to think about it is this: if Windows was as closed down as iOS, and took a 30% cut on every application purchase, would regulators have intervened?

Re: Google is a monopoly – the fix isn't obvious

#246

Post by aembleton »

nolist_policy wrote: post #238
EasyMark wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck it’s a duck. They used the “improved security” as an excuse while leaving other just as big holes in their security. Show me how AdGuard or ublock origin abused the current system in v2

> Show me how AdGuard or ublock origin abused the current system in v2 They didn't, but other malicious extensions did.

In that case, it should be a permission thing that a user can switch on for certain extensions.

Re: Google is a monopoly – the fix isn't obvious

#247

Post by aembleton »

jerf wrote: post #197
oneplane wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are probably only a small number of services that could successfully spin off on their own, but a lot of the value is in integration, which as others point out is also how some things seem 'free'. An easier example would be Microsoft and Office; you could spin off an application like that quite successfully, the same might apply to their ERP. But those examples only stem from the fact that they used to be isola…

Microsoft for a good long while made money on two things: Office and Windows. You could break them up into "Office", "Windows", and any combination of "everything else", and for the most part what would happen is that the Office and Windows parts would make more money proportionally, and most if not all of the "everything else" would die. Even products that could nominally have survived on their own if they had grown…

> how is search getting funded?

With ads, by making deals with ad brokers. Its just that they will be able to shop around rather than using their own in house one

Re: Google is a monopoly – the fix isn't obvious

#248

Post by aembleton »

jszymborski wrote: post #195
Someone wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't know how Microsoft is not up for discussion when it's a behemoth Because we think interfering with the free market is necessary when a company misuses market power, not solely when it is a behemoth.

Public companies exist to enrich shareholders. If you are in a position to abuse your market power, you're sorta obligated to.

But doing so increases risk from regulators

Re: Google is a monopoly – the fix isn't obvious

#249

Post by hilbert42 »

ekianjo wrote: post #193
rubyfan wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hard to imagine it getting worse. Browsing search engine results these days reminds me of post apocalyptic movie scenery.

There are alternatives. You don't have to use Google.

Right. I don't use Google and don't have a Google account, and I've no problem finding alternatives.

I even have an Android phone, it still works fine with all the Google crap nuked.

Re: Google is a monopoly – the fix isn't obvious

#250

Post by maeil »

shadowgovt wrote: post #91
mcpar-land wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Breaking up their individual businesses can cause each business to have incentives that line up better with their customers / users. Example: if Chrome was separated from Google, they won't have as much of an incentive to push back against adblockers with things like Manifest V3. Or include APIs that are only available to google websites (Which it has! https://x.com/lcasdev/status/1810696257137959018 )

It's an interesting hypothesis, but it's entirely possible that separated from Google, Chrome is either not a viable business model (browsers don't make money on their own) or is incentivized to get into bed with some other ad company to make money, to effectively the same result.

> It's an interesting hypothesis, but it's entirely possible that separated from Google, Chrome is either not a viable business model (browsers don't make money on their own)

No, that's not possible. Google pays $20 billion to Safari to be the default search engine. Imagine how much they would pay an independent Chrome, which has many multiples of Safari's market share. That alone guarantees it would be an incredibly viable business model.

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